Ceylon Chamber of Commerce Chairman Jayampathy Bandaranayake says that if the July 1983 riots didn’t occur the lifestyles of the people will be much better than it is today; people will be living without fear, going to work, to school without fear and this alone means a lot.

The current security measures has increased the cost of business in Sri Lanka. Thus, if there was no conflict, the cost of operations would be lower and this would have enabled businesses to perform better. Areas such as tourism would have been able to live up to its potential. Also the absence of war would be removing one obstacle that prevents foreign investors coming into the country, he said .

He noted that the current war requires human and financial resources, and if there hadn’t been war, these resources would be available to be employed to achieve better things for the country e.g. infrastructure.
However he added that the absence of war alone would not ensure that Sri Lanka will be another Singapore. “It all depends on what we do, Singapore is what it is today, mainly because it had visionary leadership. This is very important, because a country's prosperity depends on its leadership, the policies adopted and effective implementation of these policies with a long term vision,” he said.

“Absence of conflict will not ensure that infrastructure will come up, or that we will be bold enough to act on critical reforms that are holding up progress, or that our excessive spending is brought under check, or that we will have better education, training and skill development facilities,” he said.

There is no guarantee that there will be less corruption, less bureaucratic red tape or that there will be policy consistency or even political stability. He asserted that the absence of conflict will open up opportunities that are not there today because of conflict, however, whether Sri Lanka will be a prosperous economy depends on how ‘we’ make use of this opportunity.

President of the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Sri Lanka Nawaz Rajabdeen says the long term and macro economic impacts due to the 1983 July riots are very hard to estimate.
The most affected area was the country’s tourism industry which was thriving at that time. He said that today the country is lagging behind Maldives, Thailand, Singapore and several other Asian countries in the field of tourism due to the adverse effects of Black July which ignited flames of terrorism in the island.
Tourist arrivals in Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam had risen by millions in the last decade, even smaller countries such as Cambodia, Maldives and Nepal, boast a far more vibrant and growing tourism industry than Sri Lanka today. If not for the ethnic conflict the country would have been attracting two million tourists per annum at present, he said.

Mr. Rajabdeen noted that the country has lost the North’s greatest asset of educated, trained and skilled personnel as well as Tamil professionals who migrated to foreign countries using Black July as a ready made visa to settle down in those countries. He disclosed that the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora exceeds one million in Europe and the United States while over 300,000 Sri Lankan Tamils are now living in Canada. He added that the country has lost their services which in turn cannot be valued in rupee terms.
However, he said, that while the level of violence and civil strife in the country has increased since July 1983, the impact on GDP was relatively low because the problems have been concentrated in the North and East areas, in which very few of the productive assets of the country are located. Only one third of the area is suitable for agricultural production. Plantations, the agricultural mainstay of the national economy, doesn’t exist in these regions and there is very little industrial activity.

President, Ceylon National Chamber of Industries A. K. Ratnarajah said the1983 riots dealt a severe blow to economic activity in Sri Lanka, with the stock market sinking as share trading slowed to a trickle and foreign dealers stayed away at that time but later it picked up due to vigorous efforts of business leaders in the country . He expressed the belief that Sri Lanka would have been close to Malaysia as tourism would have prospered and so would have investment. “Since India was slow in opening up we would have been the gateway to the Indian market and in a position to invest in India as it liberalized,” he said .
Mr. Ratnarajah noted that the need for Sri Lankan women to go overseas as housemaids would not have arisen and the country known as a key provider of housemaids too would not have arisen. “The type of political, administrative and business leaders we would have had leading us too would have been much better as the cream who migrated would not have done so.”

Referring to the country’s achievement of five percent economic growth, he said that Sri Lanka has been able to maintain this growth rate due to effects of liberalization and the growth in the services sector.
He pointed out that current indication indicates that the problem is not going to get resolved. “Definite progress is being made on containing the symptom but attempts to resolve the cause does not appear to be getting that urgency,” he said.

Mr. Ratnarajah said that if the conditions return to normal, the North and East will substantially contribute to an accelerated tangible growth. He added that part of the reported growth today is due to investment in arms that causes destruction and not development. He reiterated that the conflict has destroyed the very fabric of civilized society and repairing this, unlike the economy, will take more than a generation. This too will have its effects on the prospects for the economy,” he said.